Sunday, May 24, 2009

This is going to be a fun post....So we had what is called a 'trade walkthru'. That's were the Winnans team gets all the subs to come to the house and gives them a set of plans and they get to walk thru the place to see things for themselves and then they give a firm hard bid. At this time the structural engineer also walked through the place to check out the situation and he came up with his own set of plans for the roof framing.

To refresh, here is the kitchen plan that we have basically settled on.

Here is the top floor plan also.

Here's the exterior renders showing the roof and the areas that need to be shingled.

Winnans takes all the bids from the subs and itemizes them all out along with their costs and does up a big itemized budget.

Can you guess how much it was for the whole she-bang??

$472,738.35!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pretty much right in line with the other three highend guys who's off the cuff numbers were about $500,000....

Here's a breakdown on the numbers.

Top floor total = 313,787.54

Kitchen = 156,309.32

Deck = 1899.09

Living room drywall = 742.40

Here's a further breakdown:

Winnans Project mgt. fees and some cleaning, hauling = $19,514.15

Demolition = $9062.50- this appears to be everything that has to be torn off even the roof shingles and sheathing which I would think normally would be in the roofers bid?

Rough Carpentry = $44,286 This includes doing the cathedral ceiling on the top floor and the two new dormers.

Insulation = $21,822.50 I spec'd close cell spray foam and I know its expensive but this number reeks of 'hey its the new green thing lets stick it too em'. There is a dearth of spray foam installers in this area and I bet with a little work I can get this number down a lot. I think this is just for the foam on the top floor not even the bottom floor or the kitchen area!!! Don't know how many board feet of foam this is but its for 5.5" of foam in a 'hot roof' configuration.

Roofing= $26,674- This is for a 50yr roof and shingling the dormer sidewalls...I'm not even sure if this includes new gutters which we absolutely need...This seems really high we got a quote for $16,000 for just the roof when we first moved in. And this does not include the roof tear-off!?!?!

Windows= $22,270.90-I don't know if this is just to buy the windows or to buy them and install them?

Skylights= $4,868.24 This is for two Velux Skylights...I hope this includes the install...

Drywall= $11,191.78 This is just the upstairs...

Paint= $4,350 This is just for one coat of primer for the upstairs...

Scaffold= $7,250.00 this is for scaffold rental...kinda bugs me that they don't have their own? and its really just to make their lives easy....

Plumbing = $28,891.25 - Just for the top floor...the 2 baths, tankless water heater, and laundry area...wow

HVAC= $2,617.25 This is just for the 2 bath exhaust vents....

Electrical = $15,667.25 -all the lights, outlets etc.

Tile= $16,269.00 for the 2 baths plus the MB shower.

Allowances = $50,000 this is for all the fixtures and what not.

Remember now kids that's all just for the top floor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So wow, we were dumbstruck to say the least....and the project mgr at Winnans knows this is way outta our budget...we told them our budget to finish the entire house including the landscaping and exterior repainting was $300,000.... now what the heck are we going to do?

We talked with Amy the Winnans project mgr. about some sort of a compromise. They are going to look into doing the ceiling on the top floor in a different way. If we can maybe just raise the collar ties instead of doing the full cathedral (which we knew going in was always going to be the most expensive option and that we told them they needed to figure it both ways....)

So what we talked about with Amy is to figure out what work Winnans can do (they do their own rough and finish carpentry) vs. what we are going to have to do ourselves.

Here's our first pass: What Winnans will do.

The Demolition-on both floors.

The Rough Carpentry-on both floors.

Roofing-we would sub this out anyways.

Installing all the new windows, doors, and skylights.

That would leave us with everything else...the plumbing, electrical, tilework,painting,heating.

Even doing that cut down amount the cost would be $160,217 if I did the math right...this is basically the cost for Winnans to 'shell' the house.

So, after $160,000 spent we'd have a house that won't look any different than the one we have now to the untrained observer...and a house that is not really 'livable' and using their numbers is going to need hundreds of thousands of dollars of work still....yay!

As we see it we have two options. We've already paid Winnans to produce 'permit ready' drawings. I can take these drawings and shop them out to other contractors with less overhead to see if I can get it done cheaper or we go with Winnans and have them do the above work. Either way we are going to be stuck doing a large portion of the work ourselves....stupid reality...problem is, we don't really have time to play GC nor do we really want to. We really seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place here...we can't afford to have them do it all yet we don't have the time to do it ourselves...

This might be a case of a high-end high-service place with higher overhead and bigger margins-higher margins that I'm sure include the subs they use.

I feel compelled to note one troubling thing about working with Winnans Construction so far....they've never met a deadline or stayed within a budget....They went over the designing budget by ~40% and this entire house remodel is over by about the same amount...not sure what to make of that ya know?

So, that's it for now hope everyone has a good memorial day weekend and remember to hug a veteran on Monday.

3 comments:

WOW. That's a lot. The only thing I ask is why would you have them do the demo work? You know you have like 20 people you can call to do that! That is one thing that doesn't take a huge amount of skill. ;)

Oh! And we just had a pretty good priced drywall guy do our entryway for super cheap. Passed inspection on the first try.